There Is A Cartography To This
by hadaka
Summary: But the maps are useless, they're all of places we can't get to.  2nd, Maps.


**Disclaimer:** Do. Not. Own.

**Warnings:** Rating for language, sexual concepts. This is **yaoi**.

**Summary: **There is a cartography to this, but the maps are useless, they're all of places we can't get to.

* * *

It's the worst moment of your life.

"I'm sorry," he says. Again. It's all he's been able to say for the last five minutes.

You're sitting on the couch. The same couch where it all began, it seems, all those nights ago. Only he isn't sitting beside you this time. He's on the smaller couch, still dressed for work, his white shirt and tie like a barrier between you. His socked feet are flat on the carpet. His elbows are braced on his knees, his hands clasped between them.

"I take full responsibility," he says, "for everything. It was my fault."

Why? Because he should have known better? Maybe. He is so much older than you. But oh, your heart hurts that he thinks it was all something that has to be blamed on someone.

"You've done nothing wrong." He lowers his head. "You...you are..."

His voice breaks. It's the most awful thing you've ever heard.

"Please," you hear yourself say, "please, that's enough."

Your heart is beating so fast. There's a place in your chest, just below the collarbone and behind the pectoralis major, that is aching in a painful, hollow way that bewilders you and makes you want to look for the bruise that _must_ be causing the pain.

"There's nothing I can say to make this right for you," he says, as if he hasn't heard you. Maybe he hasn't. "I've wronged you terribly. I can't even ask for your forgiveness."

What is this? What is he doing? What is all this talk of _wrongs_ and _forgiveness_ when you are hurting so much? "Honjo-san, please stop."

He doesn't look at you, and you are having trouble breathing.

You should go. There's nothing left to say, because he said it all. You knew something was wrong when he texted you and asked you to come over a little earlier than planned. When he answered the door dressed as he was, when he led you into the den—that same den—and sat you down on one couch while he took the other, that was when you knew that it wasn't just _something_ that was wrong. The problem is that you don't _want_ to go, because this is the last time you'll be alone in the same room with him for the rest of your life and once you leave it's _over_.

You expected this, you were waiting for it, but somehow it's still taking you by surprise.

There's a ticking somewhere in the room. The watch on his wrist. It's silver and shiny and probably some brand he was the celebrity face for at one point. You've seen him take it off countless times, unclasping it from his wrist with careful fingers, ripping it off with impatient, frantic yanks. Placing it measuredly on the bedside table, flinging it so that the metal clattered against the wood and then the watch skidded over the edge.

He's not going to let you stay one more night. He wouldn't have done it like this if he was going to. So you are not even going to get just a few final hours with him before it's finished. He's barely looked at you for the twenty minutes you've been here. He probably wants you to leave.

He's probably been through conversations like this a hundred, a thousand times. You, you're trying to relearn how to talk.

You open your mouth, but what can you say at this point? How are you supposed to decide what you want to be the last thing this man, this man whom you have such, such feelings for, hears you say in private?

_I love you_ fills your mind. You want to say it. You wanted to say it the first night you spent with him. It probably wasn't true at that point, but now...now...

You won't. Because you know it would be troublesome for him.

"I don't regret any of it," you say instead. "I never will."

You hope that was what he wanted to hear at the same time that you wish you'd said something else. You think it was too cliched. You hope you sounded mature and grown-up and resolute. You probably sounded pitiful and childish. You hope that later, when he remembers this night, he'll be impressed at how well you took it, but you think maybe he just wants it to be over.

He puts his hand over his eyes.

Then, abruptly, he stands up. You realize, when he doesn't move from there, that you are supposed to get up too, that this is his way of telling you that you have to go.

You stand.

He walks you to the front door. You stare at the backs of his legs as he walks, the shapes of his calves through his slacks, and you don't look at the parts of the house you pass through—the hall, the living room, the foyer. These are all things you are not going to see again, but you don't want to look at them. You don't want to remember those framed scrolls on the wall, or the large, square mirror that faces the door. You don't want to remember how many steps it is from the couch in the den to the stairs.

When he opens the door, the night air is chilled and tinged with frost.

You hesitate.

Oh, God. You didn't mean to. But your knees lock and you stop, just for a second, and you're looking at him with a face that you can't even imagine how it looks. You can't stand it. You need to touch him. One kiss, just one more, just one more time with his face against yours, that can't possibly be too much to ask—

He stiffens. Not a lot, but enough, his spine going slightly more rigid. He isn't looking at you. He won't. The light of the front step gleams on his glasses.

You feel like he slapped you.

"Good-bye, Honjo-san," you say instead, your voice small and weak and God, so pathetic, and then you walk through that door with legs that you are trying hard, trying for your _life_, to keep steady.

You're on the top step when you hear the door close behind you.

You won't look back. You walk down those steps, down the long, decorative stone walk, and to the gate. You let yourself out, and make certain to shut it firmly, but quietly, behind you.

The whole thing took twenty-five minutes and you never took off your jacket.

You somehow get home. The way back from his house involves a long walk to the terminal, eight stops, and two changes, and somehow you get through all of them without seeing it. You don't know what your face looks like, but no one stops you. No one asks if you're all right, if something is wrong with your chest, they can tell by your face that something there must really be hurting.

You get home, and Monta is not there. You'd feel relieved if you could feel anything. You go straight to your room, strip down to your shirt and jeans. You pick up your phone and, before you can think about it, you delete his number, his texts, your sent, received, and missed calls just to be certain, and then you get into your futon and pull the blanket over your head.

You stay there for three days.

The season's over for the year. There's nothing new until spring. There's practice, as usual, but you don't care. You skip twelve hours of classes and an important lecture, but you don't care.

You don't eat. You don't think you can.

Monta knocks on your door the second day. "Sena? Are you sick?"

You don't answer. He knocks again, but you ignore him.

On the third day, Monta opens the door.

"Sena..."

You have the blanket over your head, and you keep your back to him. You can't pay attention to anything he's saying. Something about missing a meeting and the captain being irritated and everyone being worried and Riku wanting to know why you aren't answering your phone. You don't answer any of his questions.

Monta gets concerned. "Sena, did something happen?"

You don't speak.

Monta leaves. When he's gone, you do get up, because it's been three days and you need a shower and your water bottle is empty. There's no one to hear you if you cry in the shower, but you don't. You just shower.

He had you in the bath a few times. His bathtub is almost as big as your room, and you bruised your elbows at least twice on the edge of the tub because it was slippery.

You go back to bed.

When Monta comes back, he's got Suzuna, of all people, and Riku with him.

"Sena..."

You lay there with your back to them while they talk at you and you don't care. He used to rub his chin against your ear to tickle you, and in the skin of your hip, and at other, sensitive places. He sometimes mentioned shaving more often because of how irritated your skin got after two or three kisses, but you begged him not to. You started using a lot of soothing lotion.

"If you don't get up, I'm calling Mamori," declares Suzuna.

You ignore her. They're alarmed by that, you can tell.

"Monta says you haven't been eating," says Riku. "Sena, when was the last time you ate anything?"

"Sena, man, _please_," says Monta. "What happened?"

Monta's other best friend is Taka. Monta's never said it, but you think at this point that Monta's probably closer to Taka than he is to you. What would Monta say if he knew that you've been sleeping with his best friend's father, his idol, his hero, in his own bed? That when you pleaded off from nights out at bars and events and concerts and pick-up games and who knows what else, you weren't really studying or running errands or visiting your parents or whatever you made up but gasping for breath under Monta's childhood hero?

Would you still be friends?

"I'm sick," you hear yourself say. A curt, hoarse voice. "I want to sleep."

They all shut up. Maybe they're offended, but you can't quite bring yourself to care. They leave your room, at least, and you can hear them arguing in low voices in the living room for a while, and then you really do fall asleep. For a little while.

You're exhausted, but it's difficult to tell because you're so numb. You sleep in thirty-minute intervals and you think you've accumulated maybe three hours of sleep in three days, but when you close your eyes, all you see is him. There were times at night when he would be sleeping and you were awake for no reason and you just laid there and looked at him. At the line of his jaw from ear to the point of his chin, at the stubble you were always scraping your face against. At the way he slept with one arm folded behind his head and one hand splayed over his stomach. You have memories of curling up behind him, your knees tucked into the backs of his and your arm around his waist and your head against his back, that long, broad back, and you felt safer and more wanted than you've ever been in your life, as if he was the only thing holding the world up and he was yours.

Knowing that it would all soon be over was a mental thing. It was an abstract concept that wasn't real in the way that things that have occurred and are occurring are. The _it will happen someday_ was always so far off. But maybe some part of you always knew this wasn't going to last, because you spent so much time just looking at him, just touching him, trying to memorize everything about him. He never seemed bothered that you were so tactile, that you always wanted to have your hand on him, to have his skin against yours. If anything, he seemed gratified at the idea that you found him so attractive, you couldn't stop touching him.

None of that did anything to prepare you.

Something snide and ugly in your head would suggest to you, Well, sure. What forty-two-year-old man wouldn't enjoy a twenty-one-year-old groping him all the time? But you won't listen to such insinuations. You know what the public consensus would be on what you had with him, and it's all disgusting, but you know different. You think. Isn't he a huge baseball star? Couldn't he have any woman he wanted in his bed, or any man if it came to that? Yet he took _you_, boring, ordinary you, and doesn't that mean something?

He didn't keep you, of course. But that's just because he's...he's...

What? Honorable? A family man? Concerned? What?

The child in you cries out that love should have been enough. Why didn't he throw everything away to be with you? That's what you would have done. And those are stupid, stupid things to think, because real life doesn't work like that. You understand. You knew he had other obligations, other responsibilities, that he could never give you everything, that he was always going to have to...to...

You sleep a little, and then you lie awake for a little, and then it's the fourth day and Monta is here again.

"Sena," he says, "if you're still feeling sick, I'm taking you to the hospital."

He speaks firmly, unquestionably. You think he's been talking to Mamori. This is the reaction she would have had two days in.

Monta looks distinctly grown-up making this ultimatum. He's taller than Mamori now, torso and legs finally catching up to ears, hands, and feet. Do you think they'll ever actually get together? Monta's been pining for Mamori for so long, and she's just broken up with her second serious boyfriend, and ever since you moved in with him, Monta seems to think he's got shared custody of you.

Mamori would be so, so disappointed in you.

"All right," you say, and you pull the blanket from your head and you get up.

You find that what replaces the nights you used to spend at his place is a sharp and hungry need to find some excuse to have contact with him. You did delete his contact information from your phone, and you're so pathetically _relieved_ you had the impulse to do this that first night because you could never have done it now, but you know his phone number by heart and you wonder if he's had the sense to change it. It's so tempting to send a text, just one text, just...what? What could you say? Hello? How are you? I miss you? Please, please, please take me back?

You would humiliate yourself completely in a heartbeat if it wasn't for your awful fear of his contempt.

And still, _still_, you want to do it, you _need_ to do it, you can't think of anything else, even if he'll think you're the sorriest thing he's ever seen, at least he'll be thinking of you. You want an explanation. You want to hear him tell you again, _I'm sorry_. You want to hear his voice, just one last time, one more time, surely that would be enough.

He hasn't contacted you. Not at all.

You break your phone.

You do it because you were about to call him. You catch yourself dialing his number, you get four digits in and then your phone is in fragments on the floor. There's a mark on the wall and you don't remember throwing it.

You won't understand until later what an exceptional act of willpower that was. So many other people would have just called him.

Monta comes out of his room. "Sena! What happened?"

That's all he asks you these days. "Monta," you say, "let's go have a drink."

He looks surprised. "Now? It's max late. Don't you have class tomorrow?"

"I don't care."

He frowns. He's going to say no. He was probably studying for exams when that savage little muscle spasm of yours distracted him.

"Taro." You don't have to do much to plead. _"Please."_

His eyes widen. You almost never use his real name.

You get drunk. So drunk that Monta has to carry you home. You don't remember much of it, and you hope you didn't cry or say anything embarrassing or that you shouldn't have. You do remember throwing up on the train, and how angry Monta was.

The next morning, he won't talk to you. He's pissed about last night. He goes to class while you skip with your hangover and then later he doesn't want to go to the bar.

"You just got over being sick," he says, though he looks much more doubtful now. "I think that's a max bad idea."

You go by yourself.

You don't know how cliched this is. Or maybe you just don't care. But there's a reason why getting drunk is such a classic method of dealing with things like this. You find that when you're drunk, you don't hurt anymore. When you're drunk, it doesn't matter that the man you love is not willing to be with you at all cost. When you're drunk, you're warm and buzzed and woozy and nothing matters. You feel good about things and think that it's so stupid that you're being this idiotically tragic over a breakup. That's what it was, right? A breakup. The end of a relationship, such as it was. You're _twenty-one_. You were with him for less than a year. You own gloves older than the non-relationship you're not eating over.

What if you'd been a woman? Would that have made a difference? If you'd had a vagina and breasts instead of a penis and testicles, could he have kept you then? Everyone would still have laughed at the two of you, the celebrity rags would have talked so much trash about you, but what if? Could he have been able to ignore all that and let you stay? Could you have moved in with him, told people who you were dating, could he have put a ring on your finger? Could he have stood up to his children, taken you out in public? Could you have been the twenty-one-year-old university junior that old baseball has-been is all gaga for, twenty years between them it'll never last I'll bet she's a gold-digger, but oh, sometimes she does look like she's crazy for him, that starstruck idiot...

You know! You'll get a sex change! No problem! No more tequila.

At least you're not trying to call anybody. Or—and this is a much worse idea, _the_ worst—going to his house.

The first time someone hits on you, you don't even notice for at least half the awkward, half-slurred conversation. He's older, though not that much older, and good-looking in a bland sort of way in his suit with the tie undone. You're not quite sure why he's talking to you, and it's not until he puts his hand on your arm and asks you quietly if you want to go someplace a little more private that the light bulb goes on. Oh! _Oh._ Wait. Are you in a gay bar? Did you accidentally go into a gay bar?

This man doesn't look anything at all like _him_.

You excuse yourself, pay your tab, and leave. He actually follows you out. That's when you get a little scared, because this is too reminiscent of too many bullies, which only goes to show that you can take the gopher out of high school but and the rest. For the first time in nearly four years, you run away from someone, though this time it's in a cab and not by jumping onto a train.

_This_, of all things, is what makes it occur to you that maybe you could try sleeping with someone else. Why not? _He_ doesn't want you anymore. And you're not a virgin anymore, so, nothing to be embarrassed about. You know what you're doing! You are a master of the arts of things that would make your parents cry to know you know. You could take someone to bed and rock their world and not think about him for a second! This is new beginnings for you, you heartbreaker!

Except none of them are him.

It's enough to make you want to cry, even when you're drunk. These comparisons you make in your head: that one's face is too square, that one doesn't have hair short enough. That one is too clean-shaven, that one's too heavy in the waist, that one's shoulders aren't wide enough...

For the first time in your life, you wish you had some gay friends, so you could ask them if this was normal. Is it normal for you to fixate on the man who was your first? Is it normal to look for him in everyone else you are thinking about taking to bed? Is it a gay thing or a straight thing or a you thing? All of the above? None?

Trust you to fail miserably at meaningless sex. You drink more.

At this point, it's been nearly three weeks and your team captain has some serious questions for you. You've missed a lot of classes and your professors have some questions for you too. You get a feeling that Riku and Monta have been covering for you, but you don't care.

The first time you black out, you wake up to some guy trying to pull down your unbuckled jeans in the restroom and it's like waking up into a nightmare.

You fight him off, even drunk and trying not to throw up, and you're shaking with the close call you just had when you stagger out of the bar and into the cold. You left your jacket back there, but there's nothing in it and you aren't going back. Your wallet's in your back pocket, at least, and your keys are in your front. You fix yourself up as much as you can, put your arms around yourself, and walk down the street to catch a cab. It's going to be expensive as hell, but you're too drunk and too scared and too awful-looking for the train.

When you get home, Monta opens the door before you can get it unlocked.

"Hey," you say, shivering uncontrollably. It's really cold.

He stares at you. "Where's your jacket?"

"I lost it."

His eyes are on your face. "What's that?"

You guess that the guy in the restroom must have gotten a fist on you. "I fell."

_You liar,_ Monta's eyes seem to say, but he finally steps back and lets you pass.

You take one step in and realize that Yamato Takeru and Honjo Taka are there.

You run for the bathroom and spend a few minutes throwing up. You can't decide if it's because you're drunk or because you blacked out for the first time in your life and almost got raped in a public restroom or because walking into your apartment and finding Honjo Taka sitting at your kotatsu is just too fucking much. You think that this is just more than a person should have to put up with, can put up with. You have to draw the line here because you are not going to sit there and chitchat with _his son_ and pretend everything's fine—

Monta's yelling at you. "What's wrong with you! Look at yourself, Sena, just fucking look at you, you're drunk all the time and you're skipping all the time and you're going to get kicked off the team and it's our last year—"

Did the other two leave? You hope so. You'd hate to think that Monta is angry enough with you to forget himself and say all these things in front of company. What are they even doing here? Didn't they graduate? Shouldn't they be—you don't know, at jobs, at training camp, at whatever the hell they've decided to do with their lives. Do you think Taka is the type of son to go home and tell his father all about a close friend's drunk and out-of-control roommate? Will this get back to him? Oh, God, what if it does, what if he hears about how you're about to get kicked off the team and fail out of university and you're coming home drunk every night—

"—and what—...Sena?"

What if he hears? What if he already has? What if he knows that he left nothing standing when he broke it off with you, that you childishly tried to put on a heroic face for him but then started dissolving into this drunken mess just the second he was out of sight? What if he knows that this is all you are in the end, a stupid twenty-something he was glad enough to screw for a while but managed to get rid of before the real you started to show?

"Sena..."

He's probably so relieved. So, so relieved, to have you out of his life.

"Sena, are you crying?"

_"No,"_ you say, but your voice is rasping and broken and lost and anyone can tell you're crying. "I'm not crying. I'm drunk. I'm just drunk."

"Sena," says Monta, and now he's pleading, he's the one who sounds miserable. His arm is around your shoulders. "Sena, c'mon, tell me what happened. Please tell me what happened."

"Nothing happened. I'm drunk." But you're sobbing, you're crying and trying not to cry, that's you whimpering and choking, and there's such a silence in the apartment.

You throw up again, but he holds your hair back and doesn't get angry.

You get really sick. Monta goes out and comes back in a few times, and at some point you realize Mamori is here because she's got your head in her lap, she's wiping your face with a damp towel. You forget that you're a twenty-one-year-old adult who just had his much older lover break up with him in _the most adult way_ and you press your head into her lap and put your arms around her waist and curl into her like she'll protect you from the world. She's murmuring soft, sweet things over your head and stroking your hair. You want to be fifteen again, with nothing but football and not getting bullied filling your head and without any idea what it feels like to breathlessly and urgently call your lover's name as he moves over you.

"I'd say someone put something in his fucking drink," you hear someone say, someone who sounds like Hiruma except that's impossible, he's long graduated from Saikyoudai, you haven't had an e-mail from him in months. "If he gets any sicker, we'll have to take him to the hospital and get his stomach pumped. Otherwise, he'll sleep it off."

"Aw, man," says Monta, voice falling. "And I was yelling at him..."

"Sounds like he needed to get fucking yelled at."

"Do you know what happened, Monta?"

"I—I don't know. He just, he got sick one week and then he started drinking. We...we haven't been talking much, this last year."

"He got sick?"

"Yeah, max. He looked terrible. And he couldn't eat for days."

Hiruma doesn't say anything. You think that's awfully, unexpectedly kind of him.

You should know better.

When you wake up the next morning, Mamori's gone because she has work and Monta is asleep and it's Hiruma sitting next to your futon.

"So," says Hiruma, typing without break on his laptop. It's five-thirty-three in the morning and he looks like sleep is a human weakness he is impervious to. "You want to tell me who fucked you over or do you want to go straight to you not being a fucking alcoholic anymore unless you want me to fucking murder you?"

That ache in your chest is back. It's brought a new dull pain in your stomach with it. You stare up at the ceiling and think how grateful you are that there is nothing, nothing in this room, not even ticket stubs or cash card receipts, to give anything away.

You hear him take a breath. "That bad, fucking brat?"

You don't answer.

He sits with you for a while longer and then he leaves around seven, though not before making his threats. "I hear about you even _looking_ at a shot glass, you fucking brat, I'll _put_ you in that fucking hospital."

When you've heard the door close and lock behind him, you stare at nothing and realize that you can't even put Hiruma's visit into context, you've heard so little from him over the last year. Is he going to work? Is he still playing football? How did he get here? Where does he live? You find it peculiar that someone who used to be so important to you, someone around him your life almost literally revolved at one point, should now be such a stranger to you, but then again, Monta isn't quite your best friend anymore either. He hasn't been for a while, though he's still the closest thing you've got to it. Even Mamori's been so busy, now that she's an adult and seriously trying to be a preschool teacher. You can't remember the last time you two spent time together. It turns out that growing apart is just a natural thing when you're in your twenties and going to different universities and studying different things and making new friends. It's normal.

Or was it just you, and the lover who took up all your time, the lover you couldn't tell anyone about?

You sleep again, and when you wake up, it's early afternoon and Monta's gone to class. He left you a bento in the fridge and a note saying _I'll be back at 5. Mamori says she'll be here at 6 with food. Don't go anywhere._

You shower and dress and you leave. You're not going to drink though. You're done doing that. You kill a few hours at an internet cafe instead, because you need it to be later for what you want to do.

You're going to find someone to fuck you.

It's like you had an epiphany while you were sick. This is how you're going to get over this. You were a virgin and then you weren't and all you know is him, so no wonder you can't get over it. No wonder all you can think about is him. You've got nothing else there! How easy is this? Just sleep with someone else, someone you won't ever have to see again, and it'll be as if you've been exorcised! Just like all those magazines say, all those movies, TV shows, just like you've heard plenty of people your own age say! What you need is a one night stand. You had this idea earlier but couldn't pull it off because you were too drunk and upset. Now you're sober and ready and you _need_ this to happen. You can't keep living the way you are. Something has to change.

You need to forget him, because this is just too, too painful.

The gay bar is intentional this time. You walk in fearlessly and with something like excitement tightening your skin. You think you're dressed all right for it, in your dark jeans and short-sleeved shirt, your gray blazer. The bruise on your face is almost unnoticeable. You think you're imagining it when every eye there turns toward you, you're just nervous and maybe even still a little out of it from the drug. It's all somehow different—the crowd isn't so frightening, the semidarkness isn't so nerve-racking, you don't feel like everyone is about to point at you and laugh.

He used to always tell you how beautiful you are. How unbelievably lovely. You would be standing at the door putting on your jacket to leave, and he'd stare at you, reach out to trace your eyebrows, your nose, your lips with his fingers.

You didn't believe him. You don't.

The bartender looks at you from under his pierced brows but doesn't ask for id. His fingers brush yours as he hands you your drink. You can't help it—you blush, darkly and deeply, because not even a year of being someone's dirty secret has done anything to help your physical reactions to things, and the bartender stares at you like you hit him.

You're moving toward the back of the bar, where there are tables set against the wall, trying to think of what to do next, and that's when someone takes your arm.

"How old are you?"

The man's tall and rangy, but in nearly top physical shape. You like that because even with the beating you've served out to yourself lately, you are also in top physical shape and you're used to people who are and you find it attractive. He has black hair and black eyes and he looks like he played sports in high school or university. He looks older than you, but not by much.

You can't believe it's this easy. "Twenty-one."

The man is looking at you—at your neck, you realize, like _he_ used to.

The heat that flushes your skin is familiar and quick and almost painful.

"Are you spoken for?" he asks you.

No. "No."

The man pulls at your arm, and then his mouth is almost on your ear. "I'm Yui."

"I'm Sena."

He takes your hand.

The bar smells like alcohol and cologne and smoke. There are other couples in the dark, some just talking, others kissing. No one gives you two a second glance, and the music is louder. Are you excited or scared? Do they have to be two different feelings?

"What are you looking for?"

You answer without thinking. "I want to forget someone."

His eyes widen, and he laughs a little. "That's honest."

Were you not supposed to be? Oh. Should you have lied about your name, too? Have you messed this up already?

"Sorry," you say, and you're so embarrassed, you feel like an idiot.

"God," says Yui, "you're just a little too cute, you know that?"

Is he being sarcastic? Is _too cute_ even a thing? "Sorry?"

His free hand goes to your neck, the fingers in your hair. "There are rooms in the back."

This is it. "Oh."

"If I'm all right, I'll help you."

The point of no return. "Yes."

You think he's going to kiss you. Your knees go weak with relief when he doesn't. You raise the glass in your hand and down the thing in one gulp before you recall that you aren't supposed to be drinking anymore. It's probably all right though, you could use the liquid courage.

Yui pulls you by the hand, instead, pulls you with him as he walks. There's a door with a dark purple light over it in the back, and that's where he takes you. Through the door there's a short hall of other doors and stairs, dimly lit, and the stairs are where Yui goes.

He's familiar with this place. You think he must come here often. You're passing closed doors as you go down the upstairs hall, and you can hear things from some of them. Things you don't think you should be hearing.

Can you imagine _him_ in such a place?

Yui finds the one he wants, and he opens a door. What's inside is a tiny room with nothing in it but a long couch and a small, single-drawer side table with a shaded lamp on it. It's bare, and cleaner than you expected though not by much.

He closes the door behind you.

Your mouth is dry. You're suddenly less excited and more scared. You've never even imagined a place like this before, where the purpose of the couch is blatant and open. You're remembering a spare, modern bedroom, with a platform bed of white wood and gray sheets and windows that took up the whole wall.

And then Yui's mouth is on your neck.

It's strange. Where's the scratch of stubble? Where is the cologne you know, the large hands on your waist?

Yui sucks at your skin like he's in a hurry. He uses his teeth, even though he has to know it's going to leave a mark. He's pushing the blazer from your shoulders, his hands are pulling your shirt up.

"I always top," he says against your neck. "I figured you for a bottom."

You know what that means, but you wish he hadn't said it. "Y-yes..."

"Bareback okay?"

What? "Uh..."

He pushes you to the couch, and you sit because there's a queasy feeling coming from your stomach. You don't know where that earlier lust went, when something about him triggered a memory of Honjo-san in your brain.

Then Yui is sitting next to you. "Your cherry's popped, right?"

"Yes—"

He pushes you again, and now you're lying back on the couch and he's pulling one of your legs up and over his hip so that you're straddling him. He reaches for your belt and undoes the buckle.

"Fuck, you're hot," says Yui, his eyes on your face. "Whoever he is, he's a fucking idiot."

That's not fair. He's not an idiot, he's just...he just had other things he had to think about. He didn't mean to hurt you. Right? He made the first move, but you were the one who went to his house in the first place.

You remember. You were so nervous, and so naive. You didn't even know what you wanted from him when you rang his doorbell. You actually thought you were there to watch football games. You didn't even know what to make of the tightness in your stomach and legs, in the way you had to catch your breath when he smiled at you. You didn't have a clue what you wanted, what exactly it looks like when two men make love to each other.

Now you do. You've had your introduction: everything you know about sex and love, between a large, professionally decorated bedroom and a filthy room in the back of gay bar.

Oh, God, what are you doing?

He would vomit to see you like this.

"Wait," you say, and you don't like that you _sound_ scared. "Wait, I—wait a minute—"

Yui yanks at your jeans. You grab for them.

Your jeans are sliding halfway down your hips. You shove at Yui, but he's bigger than you are.

"Come on," he whispers, "you're already here...I thought you wanted to forget him..."

What happened to your epiphany? Wasn't this what you wanted? Wasn't this supposed to purge you of all desire for him, forever and ever, so that you'd never hurt again? Wasn't this one night stand supposed to free you, liberate you from all that grief?

But the idea of letting Yui have you the same way _he_ had you is enough to make the bile come up your throat.

You open your mouth to tell him you've changed your mind and the door bangs open.

"What," says Hiruma, "the _fuck_ do you think you're doing?"

You gape. You can't help it. You think you're hallucinating except that Yui gapes too, his hands still on your naked hips where he was trying to finish taking your pants and underwear off.

Hiruma takes three steps inside and kicks Yui in the face.

You're pulling your pants back up while Yui curses and groans on the floor, hands over his nose. You're trying to get the buckle to work in your shaking hands when your blazer is thrown over your head.

"Put it on," says Hiruma, and you've never heard him so angry, never.

"I didn't know," says Yui through his hands, nasal. "I didn't know the bitch had a boyfriend, all right..."

Hiruma kicks him again, in the stomach. Yui yelps.

When you have your coat half-on, Hiruma takes your wrist in his hand and drags you out of the room.

He doesn't take you back into the bar, but down the stairs and through another door that goes outside. It's an alley, behind the bar probably. There are cars and bikes parked along the sides.

Hiruma's not talking. He drags you along as if he's forgotten you exist, it's just that your wrist is in his grip. The top button of your jeans is loose and you want to fix it but you need both hands.

"H-Hiruma—"

How is he here? How did he know? How could he have possibly known?

The world unbalances. You stumble and trip and then he has to stop, because he's dragging you on your knees. He doesn't let go of your wrist and you use that to stagger back to your feet.

Why is everything so bleary?

"I—Hiruma—"

Long fingers dig into your face. Hiruma's holding your chin, using it to move your face from side to side while he examines your eyes, your other, shaking hand prying at his.

"Fucking brat," says Hiruma, "you are the only idiot I know who gets roofied twice in two days."

Roofied? You know that term, but—

He starts walking again.

You don't know where you're going, but it takes a while. You're stumbling after him as well as you can, trying to straighten out your head, and you don't have the motor control to really pay attention to your surroundings. You know it's relatively far from the gay bar and when you do get there, Hiruma goes in by the back again instead of the front. You have an impression of a frightened-looking man in a butler's uniform bowing you in, and then you think there's an elevator and Hiruma is holding your wrist so tightly, too tightly, it's hurting you—

You're lying on a bed.

The light is low in this room. You're lying on your back in a made bed, the pillows deep and soft under your head. You're missing your jacket and shoes, and it's a little chilly.

You roll your head and see Hiruma.

He's sitting in a chair by the window, his feet up on the table, his head on one hand. The window is where the light is coming from, the light of dawn over the city, and the window is huge and long, the panes of glass nearly taking up half the wall. There's a balcony out there. You can't see the rest of the room because your neck is not working.

Hiruma's fully dressed, from the tie and the shoes to the styling gel in his short black hair. There's a slim laptop on the table beside him, but it's closed.

He's looking at you.

You're still groggy, so it's more difficult than you can believe to understand the expression on his face. Probably disappointment, at finding you in a place like that, doing a thing like that. Or anger, that he's had to take time out of his busy schedule of doing the things Hiruma does to come and find you. Did Mamori put him up to this? You don't think Monta could have made him do it.

Nothing feels real.

"Sena," says Hiruma, and it must be the drug, his voice sounds so soft and gentle to you, "tell me what happened."

You don't want to. You can't. Even if he doesn't want you anymore, you still love him and you don't want to hurt him. No one can know, you can't tell, you can't.

"Sena," Hiruma says again, so quietly, almost kindly, like he's _asking_.

So you do. You tell him everything. You're too tired and too hurt and too drugged to ignore Hiruma Yoichi _asking_ you anything. You're not exactly all there in the head yet, so it's probably rambling and out of order and broken and confusing and you're not telling it at all straight, but you do tell him. You slur and you're not always coherent, but you don't cry and you stay quite calm.

You tell Hiruma about the first time you really met him and how you didn't really think anything of it. You talk about the first time you slept with him and how embarrassed you were to be a virgin and how he was so nice about it all, about how hard he tried not to hurt you. You tell Hiruma about that big bedroom with the blinds and the drapes and the rules associated with it, like how the word _love_ was not allowed and nobody brought up anything that had to do with family. You tell Hiruma about how kind he was to you, how he never pushed you to anything you didn't want to do, and how you could tell he wanted more for the two of you, it was just that he had his children to think of, he had other obligations, it just wasn't to be. You tell Hiruma about how you were selfish and wanted more than he could give you, but you think you did a decent job of keeping those ugly feelings to yourself. You tell Hiruma about all the lies you told Monta, about how desperately you tried to avoid seeing Taka at all, about blacking out, about that man in the men's room of that bar who was pulling your pants down, about finding Taka in your apartment and getting sick, about how ashamed you feel still because it seemed almost like a betrayal of some kind, it sounds dumb but that's how it feels. You tell Hiruma that you don't know why he decided to break it off when he did, but that you knew it was coming and should have expected it and everything since then has been because you're so weak, you're the one at fault, you were the one who couldn't handle it and just fell apart. You tell Hiruma that you never wanted to tell anyone about this because you love him so, you never want anything to trouble him, and if Hiruma could please, please, please not say anything about this to anyone, if he could just leave this out of his databases, can't he please, because you love him so much...

Hiruma doesn't interrupt you. He sits, exactly the way he was sitting when you opened your eyes, and listens to you talking, his eyes on your face. His skin is painted orange and gold by the sunrise through the window, and it's so strange how black his hair is. You won't wonder until later exactly what kind of twenty-two-year-old university graduate you haven't seen in a year comes running back into town to look for you at only a single phone call.

Finally, finally, the last few words are gone and you stop, because you can't think of anything else to say. You're looking at Hiruma, waiting for him to—to tell him how stupid you are, what a fucking idiot, what were you thinking, obviously you could never have held on to someone like that anyway, you two just don't match—

Hiruma's hand is over his eyes. You can't see his eyes, and you think he must be so disgusted he can't even look at you. You close your own, because tears are pricking at the corners.

There's a sliding rattle, and the light dims. There's a movement in the mattress beneath you, and you open your eyes to see Hiruma sitting on the bed, his back to you.

He's taking off his shoes. His tie is already gone. You're still too strung out, and when Hiruma swings his legs on the bed and turns to you, you're not even alarmed.

His arm slips under your shoulders, a hand carefully maneuvers your head. You experience a moment of acute lightheadedness.

Hiruma is holding you in his arms. Your head rests against his chest, and you can hear how fast his heart is beating.

Long fingers stroke your hair.

"I promise I won't tell," says Hiruma. Softly. Quietly.

Despite the drugs, there is something building in you. A pressure that is unbearable, a need you can't name. The only other time you felt it was that time you cried in front of Monta because you were drunk and drugged and sick and in shock at seeing Taka in your home.

You tell Hiruma about one last thing. You mouth it into his shirtfront, half-muffled, one last secret. You tell Hiruma about how he always called you _Sena_, whether you were just talking or making love or in front of others, but you always had to call him _Honjo-san_. You never got to use his name because you didn't have the courage to ask for it and he never offered. So even when you cried out from under him, when you were in his bed and your body wasn't entirely yours, it wasn't _Masaru_, but _Honjo-san_.

You think you understand why he did that, but oh, it's painful, it's agony.

You're crying. You're crying bitterly, violently, with all the hurt you've been stifling and starving and drinking into silence. You're crying, because you love him so much and this is all you'll ever have of him.

Hiruma holds you to him, holds you so tightly it hurts, and he doesn't stop you.

He says into your hair, in a voice as cold and still as glass or a razorblade, "The only reason I won't destroy him and everyone he loves is because it would hurt you."

You think you understand why Hiruma said that, but you don't. Not yet. Right now, you're in too much pain, you're too in love, you can't see anything past that memory of his sleeping body you've cut into your heart. You think you understand why Hiruma is so angry, so angry he's shaking at the same time that he's holding you so protectively, but you don't.

You can't hear what he's really saying, because your grief is still so loud within you.

Don't worry. You will.

* * *

**A/N: **Man! This one was a surprise to me. To tell you the truth, it was supposed to be Musashi and there was going to be sex, but Hiruma jacked the whole thing.


End file.
